Resolve to Ride Your Bike & Help the Earth

It’s Earth Day, the day to take stock of what we can do to in protecting the environment around us. It’s so easy to think that one person won’t make a difference, but little things can make a difference. Take plastic shopping bags for instance. We Americans throw away 100 billion of these polyethylene bags each year (only 0.6% are ever recycled.) If every shopper took just ONE less bag each month, the US could eliminate hundreds of millions of bags a year. Each household throws away many thousands of these bags: besides the plastic shopping bag, it’s the plastic packaging that products come in; it’s also the trash bags we use. Make a resolution like using reusable canvas bags and make a change in your life.

We all know that motor vehicles contribute to pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide. One cyclist CAN make a difference by using a bike instead of a car

By using your bike instead of a car for one four-mile round trip a day for 4 ½ months, you’ll keep one ton of pollutants out of the air you breathe.  Amazingly, more than 82 % of trips five miles or less are made by personal motor vehicle. Short car trips actually are more polluting than longer trips on a per-mile basis because 60% of the pollution resulting from auto emissions is released during the first few minutes of operation of the vehicle. Is there any way we can use a bike for many or most of those short trips and leave the car at home?

Street parking for bikes in Fort Collins, CO. (photo courtesy of 21st Century Urban Solutions)

Free Parking?

The cost of constructing one parking spot in a paved lot is about $2,200 and it is nearly six times that amount to construct one parking space in a parking garage ($12,500). In that spot for one average-sized car, you can put 8-16 bikes! (The photo above shows a space that can park 10 bikes!)

Want to calculate the true cost of driving? Check out this.

Here’s a few tips for using your bike for errands and grocery shopping.